One year on and we acquire the art of house-sitting…

This time last year we were still jet-lagged, having flown into Melbourne two days previously. We had been given the most wonderful welcome by our Airbnb hosts Cathi and Iris, and were feeling exhausted from the hectic pack up in London and the long flight. The day we left home, London was looking her best with an abundance of spring flowers blooming gloriously in gardens and window boxes, and the sun had been shining for days.  The evenings were getting longer and Londoners were beginning to shed their long, wintry grey faces and glow with the expectation of summer just around the corner.  We arrived here to Melburnians breathing a sigh of relief after the heat of summer and wrapping themselves up to enjoy the cooler Autumn days.  There was still plenty of sunshine, and although the nights were closing in, it never felt like the sky was sitting on my head like it had often felt in London after days of greyness when, at times, my yearning to see the sun became almost overwhelming.

Now a year on, we are settling into Melbourne life, as we both begin work and continue with our house and pet sitting assignments.  My sister house-sat for three and a half years and so we followed her advice by joining a housesitting website and taking the time to write a very good profile, post lots of pictures and attach references. The combination of assignments from the website and from personal recommendation has resulted in us having bookings from March until mid-September. We have learnt to treat house sitting as a job which pays us the equivalent of rent and all utility bills while allowing us to live in much more luxurious surroundings than we would otherwise be able to afford.  We also get the use of a fully equipped house.  In return we look after the house, garden and pets, making sure the house is immaculate and the pets healthy and happy when we hand the property back.  We send occasional updates to the owners with pictures of their pets accompanied by little anecdotes of their quirky behaviour.  Owners love it because they don’t have to pay boarding fees and their pets get to stay in their familiar surroundings which is far less stressful for them than kennels or catteries.

Keeping up with Woodleigh in the shallows of Port Phillip Bay.  Melbourne’s CBD in the background

Walking the dogs gives us plenty of exercise and we also get to explore the local area and do quality control on all the coffee shops.  Woodleigh was a challenge though!  He is a poodle/retriever cross, almost two years old and extremely high energy.  We took him walking on the beach and in the bay every morning.

Coffee with Woodleigh – never a truly relaxing experience!

Checkingout the site of Melbourne’s Formula 1

Even after two hours out, he still had plenty of energy.  We liked nothing better than chasing the beach cleaning tractor, and terrorising wind surfers and joggers. He also liked to chase the little fish that frequent the shallows of the bay and shadows if we stopped for a coffee.  Woodleigh lived in Ripponlea next to a synagogue that served a fundamentalist Hassidic population.  This was my first experience of these people and I found their outfits quite intriguing.  On their sabbath the men would dress in long satin coats white stockings and quite extraordinary large fur hats.  On the other days, there was a constant coming and going of boys and men with long side curls dressed in black suits.  While we were there the weather was still quite warm and we were still wearing shorts and sandals.  On researching the origins of the men’s Hassidic outfits, I discovered that they derived from aristocratic Polish dress from the eighteenth century. It seems to me a very impractical form of dress for the Australian climate and wondered how the women coped with itchy hot wigs in 40-degree heat. The young boys would whiz along the footpath to and from the synagogue on little scooters or bicycles and at times I found myself having to jump out of the way. There were few women around and those I saw were dressed very conservatively and wore wigs or headscarves. Occasional a man spoke to Ian but I was completely ignored by all the men and boys – quite an uncomfortable experience.

Our next assignment was only a couple of kilometres away in Caulfield North but it felt like a world away.  There we stayed in a beautifully restored 1880s house with a front veranda trimmed with iron lacework, leadlights, and a very traditional dining room.  We looked after Ricky Martin, a black and white rescue cat who was recovering from a nasty accident and loved to spend all evening sitting on one or the other of us.  Ian is allergic to cat hair and so I spent lots of time combing Ricky Martin to remove as much of the loose hair as possible.

Ricky Martin gets a stroke

In conversation I found that Beth, one of the owners, is a Scrabble player so a couple of weeks after they returned we met for a couple of games.  She introduced me to the online version and now I must be very careful not to get too addicted or I’ll never get anything else done. While there we were buffeted around but a storm that was caused by weather affected by the cyclones up north.  The garden looked quite a mess and Ian found himself up a ladder trimming a tree branch had been scraping against the roof all night in the sever winds.

We are now the other side of the river in Kew East, a wealthy area full of large houses and just down the road from where I went to secondary school.  We have an elderly black Labrador called Halle, a cat called Kato and three goldfish called Scrambled, Eggs, and Toast to care for.

Halle catching her breath and trying to sniff out more disgusting tidbits

Halle eats anything, the more disgusting the better so that when walking her we are on constant alert for nasty stuff.  If we fail in our quest, she grabs it and then runs away to gobble it down before we can stop her.  She then pays us back by having the squits 24 hours later, the evidence of which she spreads artistically across the lawn in Morse code dots and dashes.  Apart from that she is very sweet and gentle and spends each evening snoring and farting by the radiator.  Then weather has been quite cold and our treat here is the spa pool on the back deck that we hop into three to four times a week with a cuppa or a g&t. It is a blissful experience whatever the weather.    All our house sit hosts have been happy for us to have visitors and we have enjoyed paying back our friends and family members who have been so kind helping us to settle in, by inviting them to share meals with us.

Kato cross at having been woken after only 18 hours sleep

We still have Alan but Ian is very happy to report that he has not slept in a camper-van for several months.  Alan is a very handy vehicle to move all our things from one house sit to another but less handy for travelling around Melbourne and trying to park in small spaces.  I must remind the parking fairy about Alan’s length and that he does not have power steering.  However, we have become experts at using the Melbourne transport app PTV and my record number of journeys in a day is 11 – a mixture of buses, trains and trams.

House-sitting has enabled us to stay in Melbourne and live within our budget (rather diminished due to Brexit) without imposing on our friends and family.  It has also enabled us to be more selective about what work we choose to do.  Recently, I was approved for registration with an Australian counselling registration body and I have begun work at rooms within a private midwifery centre.  Ian has started working with an agency that runs after school coding clubs so it is interesting juggling our house sitting duties with work commitments – especially on moving day. It always takes longer to clean the house and pack up than we think it will, but we have developed some short cuts that help.  All our food and drink items have red or yellow dots so that it is easy to know what to grab from the fridge or cupboards.  We never use peoples’ coffee pod machines so that we do not have to clean the machine or replace the pods.  A few days before we are due to go we swap the bed linen and towels to ours so that we can wash theirs ready to remake the bed on the last day without worrying about getting washing dry.  We can then wash our sheets at the next house.  Thanks to my sis for that advice. We pack everything into Woolies’ or Coles’ shopping bags that are easy to pick up and pack into Alan.  This includes our shoes and toiletries.

I have just managed to write a whole blog on house-sitting and select photos all containing a furry or hairy creature.  To continue the theme, I am leaving you with this picture of a little visitor that appeared on the back veranda one afternoon –  one of my favourite Australian creatures, a ring-tail possum.  Even more special was that she had a baby in her pouch that ventured out and curled up with her.

Ringtail possum with a baby in her pouch

White Night Melbourne

 

We prepared for a long night by packing trail mix, fruit and water.  Forecast to have a minimum temperature of 9 ˚ we rugged up well, thinking how unfair it was that a festival meant to be on a warm summer’s night was, instead, going to be rather chilly.

The train from Eltham was packed with a friendly crowd of festival goers and we alighted at Flinders Street to masses of people filling the roads normally occupied by cars and a steady stream of rumbling trams. Tonight, however, was for the people and they continued to pour into town, jostling for the best positions. We started by making our way down to the NGV in St Kilda Road, where, on the dot of 8.30 pm, the show began. The huge expanse of grey wall stone wall lit up with the Victor and Rolf’s Inside Out display of light and music.

Brilliant. That set the tone for our night and after refreshments in the serenity of the members’ room of the NGV we made our way to the banks of the Yarra past a giant lotus flower and meeting a giant winged, iridescent robot en route. We wandered through the fluorescent garden of Herbum Follus and Peony populated with the giant rabbits of Intrude, and further past a beautifully illuminated jellyfish Medusa that pulsed with light and colour to the accompaniment if an eerie soundtrack that evoked thoughts sirens’ music from Greek myths.  Then we wandered through a field of neon love hearts and under the St Kilda Road bridge to Southbank where we strolled beneath the shiny leaves and glowing ‘fruits’ of the giant Echinodermus.

We crossed the Yarra and joined the throngs along Flinders Street past the One Nation projection on the station wall to the much larger show Fractured Fairytales, projected on all the buildings between Swanston and Russel Streets.   After another break for coffee, nuts and fruit, we took the punge and joined the crush of people wandering up Swanston Street where musicians performed along its length with revellers clapping and dancing.

Flinders Street

The normally staid, monochrome statues that lined the route were ‘dressed’ for the night to create the installation ‘The secret life of statues.  We enjoyed seeing Matthew Flinders outside St Paul’s Cathedral dressed as Carmen Miranda,followed by a small projection in the corner of the cathedral called Homeless.  This had been ttaken over by a silent protest by an environmentalist protesting against global warming and pollution.

We decided against joining the very long queue to pose for photos with the neon angel wings although it did look fun.

 Little Lonsdale St featured Purple Rain and people were handed umbrellas to hold as they walked beneath the coloured mist.  I really wanted to see the immersive projection of The Seadragons’ Lair in the round reading room of the State Library but the queue was far too long so, instead, we watched the projected display of entwing jungle on the façade.  Adding to the considerable congestion in the area was a big protest opposing the proposed ban against homeless people sleeping on the streets of the CBD and the protesters had ‘tagged’ the light show with their own projection.

It was getting on to 1.30am and one friend needed to go so we left her at Melbourne Central with strict instructions to text when she got home, and headed up to the Exhibition Building and surrounding gardens.  The whole front of the building was transformed by the sound and light projection entitled ‘Rhythms of the Night’.  It explored the different stages of sleep, and featured images surreal, comic, mysterious, ghoulish and playful.

After watching it three times and oohing and aahing along with everyone else,  we reluctantly moved on to look for the Pyrophone Juggernaut.  It was well worth the search.  This giant ship shaped fire organ, formed from recycled metal and operated by a team of musicians, exploded into life.  With fire belching from its pipes, the sound gradually built to a crescendo of loud, rapid drumming and ended with a massive burst of sound and flame.  Wow.

It was almost 3am and time to get home.  The crowds were much thinner by now but we still had an hour’s journey home and did not feel we would stay awake for the last 4 hours, so we wandered off to Parliament station, stopping on the way to view the last few enchanting installations; a tree hung with the changing colours of its Pixel Fruit, the sparkling globe of Nebulous and the Sonic Light Bubble.

A wonderful magical night.  Bring back the Lumiere to London!

*This post is dedicated to my sis, Jackey, who sent me pics of each of the last four White Nights, inspiring me to go to London’s Lumiere and put this white Night on my wish list for 2017.  She wasn’t here to come with me so I hope these pics give her a good flavour.

19th February 2017

 

London Lumiere 2016

Being so excited about Melbourne’s White Night tonight, I became all nostalgic remembering the wonderful time we had in London last year.  Over four freezing cold nights in January, London’s held its first ever Lumiere festival.  It was such a success and drew crowds much larger than the organisers expected.

I had fun going back through the pics Ian and I took that night and so I am posting a selection of some of our faves.

February 18th, 2017

 

Living in the Green Wedge and catching highlights of Melbourne

Since our return to Melbourne we have been staying with my long-suffering friend Lynne in Melbourne’s Eltham.  It is about 45 minutes to the centre of Melbourne by train or a half hour drive along very wide roller coaster roads and efficient freeways.  It is a beautiful part of Melbourne.  Set in the shire of Nillumbik, it is very hilly, well wooded with Eucalypts and wattles and a short drive out to the wineries of the Yarra Valley.  There is plenty of wild life and we are woken each morning by the squawking of cockatoos.

 

In the 1970s there was a craze for building with mud brick and in my hippy phase, I toyed with the idea of getting involved but instead did nursing training and went off travelling ‘overseas’. In Eltham the legacy of this ancient tradition can be seen in several buildings, both domestic and public, scattered through the district, including the library, community centre and several buildings at Monsalvat (more later).  I discovered the  Nillumbik Mudbrick Society  established to help with the preservation of current buildings and provide information and support for those wanting to try their hand at building their own. I love sitting in the library with its thick, curvy walls, and supporting posts made from rough-hewn timber or whole tree trunks. Sound is absorbed and the insulation is so effective there is no need for air conditioning. In such a calm, womb like atmosphere, people tuck themselves into the nooks and crannies to read or work on laptops while children make a beeline for their circular pit with bean bags and cushions. It feels similar to being in the straw bale house at Wallington.

We can wander down the road and then along Diamond Creek, a tributary of the Yarra.  If feeling more adventurous, we can step out along one of the many walking trails that wind along the creeks and river through beautiful bush-land and past apple orchards and open spaces where kangaroos and wallabies graze at dawn and dusk.  One Sunday at the end of January we set off for a supposedly 10km walk, motivated by the promise of scones, jam and cream at a beautiful plant nursery half way along.  It turned out to be 16 km fast march and I arrived back limping with a very sore heel, later discovering that I had worn through the walking boots only bought 5 months ago.  That lead to a back injury and an emergency osteopath appointment where I was diagnosed with a ‘grumpy disc’ in my lumbar region. I had up the old injury obtained by attempting to teach my friend’s grandson how to sit-down/ stand-ups on a trampoline a couple of years ago.  Of course, back then, I was subjected to a barrage of major nagging from Ian about being far too old for such activities but I had no idea that trampolining was so detrimental to the spine.  Be warned all! This latest injury gave me such a shock that I have been following the osteopath’s instructions to the letter re rest, stretching and exercises.  He is so brilliant that three weeks later I am much better than I was before the injury with a bonus of much healthier knees after following his fantastic programme of progressive knee exercises – work that I should have been given following my knee surgery.

My rehabilitation was aided greatly but a trip to the Peninsula hot Springs with my friend Liz, who loves all watery activity as much as I do.  This magical place is only a 90 minute drive from Melbourne around the eastern tip of Port Phullip Bay and so just a short drive away is the bay to the north and the ocean to the south.

Mornington Peninsula with Cape Shank in the distance

These natural hot mineral springs feed a series of pools that progress up the slope to the spectacular Hilltop pool that has a 360 degree view of the surrounding countryside. There is a steam room, sauna, foot-baths, deep plunge pools and plenty of places to lie and relax amongst the pools, gardens, streams and waterfalls.  I will be back! After four hours of total indulgence we drove back up towards Melbourne, stopping at Mt Martha where Liz grew up, for an hour’s snorkelling around the rocky outcrops of the bay. As if that wasn’t enough watery activity for me, I stayed overnight and went dog walking/splashing/swimming the next morning in  the shallows of the bay at St Kilda.

Dog walking at St Kilda

Ian and I took a day trip to Healesville sanctuary with Lynne and her 6-year-old granddaughter enabling us to get up close and personal to more Australian wildlife in a wonderful bushland setting.  I remember as a child escaping the heat of Melbourne and heading ‘up to the hills’ where I was captivated by the animals and birds and enjoyed feeding emus and kangaroos.  It has been much more developed since then and hand feeding is not encouraged.  We made it to presentations and displays of dingoes, lyrebirds, wombats, and birds of prey and of course I had to visit the platypus enclosure.  I love watching these curious little creatures.

Wedge Tail Eagle, Healesville Sanctuary Pic IM

Owl, Healesville Sanctuary

Male lyrebird tail feathers, Healesville Sanctuary

Tasmanian devil, Healesville Sanctuary

Wombat presentation, Healesville Sanctuary

The presentation about lyrebirds was fascinating.  We learnt that the male does not acquire the display tail feathers until a few years old and that he moults them each year after the mating season.  The birds are the most wonderful imitators and have been heard to imitate mobile phones, chainsaws and trains besides other bird calls – all to impress a potential mate.  While checking my facts, I found this article about living with lyrebirds that I thought may interest those as fascinated as I am.

We have taken out a year’s membership to the National Gallery of Victoria which means that we can have get into one exhibition for free and have members’ rates for all the others.  We can also use the member’s room with its endless supply of tea and coffee, newspapers and exhibition guides to view.

There are two rooms, one in Federation Square opposite Flinders St Station, while the other is down on the beautiful St Kilda Road in the main NGV not far from the Botanical Gardens, the Arts Centre and the Myer Music Bowl.

Federation Square, Melbourne  – Pic IM

We visited two exhibitions.  The first was John Olsen’s You Beaut Country .  I hated the early work with its raw slashes of black paint but loved the later work with the colours of the Australian outback and of Lake Eyre – the huge salt lake in the centre of Australia.

John Olsen You Beaut Country

John Olsen tapestry

John Olsen Tapestry 2

John Olsen Tapestry 3

The second was David Hockney: Current which features 1200 images of work created in the last decade.  This included work created on his iPhone and iPad with installations showing all the steps used to create the wonderfully painterly images. We spent 4 hours there and came out in a daze.

Close by to Eltham are two interesting art galleries and collections:  Heide and Monsalvat. Monsalvat in Eltham, begun in the mid 1930s is Australia’s oldest artists’ colony and despite a very turbulent history is still a working artists’ centre.  The various buildings were constructed by Justus Jorgensen and his friends and are became wonderfully eclectic in design and materials as the colony grew to include a medieval style Great Hall, a Chapel and various farming activities.  It is now held by a trust and hosts weddings, festivals and art exhibitions. There is even a hand built swimming pool, that has to be labelled as an ‘ornamental pool’ to satisfy the health and safety inspectors,  Reportedly, Mick Jagger swam here naked back in the 1960s.

Monsalvat – entrance

Monsalvat – chimneys

Monsalvat – Bluestone chapel

Monsalvat – Swimming pool . Reputedly, Mick Jagger swam here naked…

Monsalvat – Great Hall

Monsalvat – Artist studio with mud brick wall in front

Monsalvat – Mud brick building

Monsalvat – Mudbrick building front view

Monsalvat – Barn interior

Heide Museum of Modern Art is set on a hillside in Heidleberg and slopes down to the Yarra.  It is a 15 acre property bought in 1934 by John and Sunday Reed who dedicated their lives to sponsoring and supporting artists, writers and intellectuals.  Some of Australia’s most famous artists stayed here.  Sidney Nolan painted his famous Ned Kelly series on the dining room table at Heide.   The gardens are now a sculpture park and a great place to wonder around and take a picnic.

Another trip was to the Australia Garden at Cranbourne.  This is a 15-hectare outpost of Melbourne’s Botanic Gardens and is landscaped to feature the different pant environments of Australia from the harsh arid climates to the ancient Gondwanan rainforests.  It is still a work in progress and features some wonderfully innovative architecture and landscaping.

Australia Garden, Cranbourne pic IM

Australia Garden Cranbourne 2

Australia Garden Cranbourne 1. Pic IM

Australia Garden, Cranbourne – Flowering gum

Australia Garden, Cranbourne 4

Melbourne in the summer is a wonderful place to be.  We have been to three free open air concerts performed by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra at the Myer Music Bowl.  Melburnians in the know pack a feast, plenty of alcohol, sunscreen, hats, umbrellas, and festival chairs in their market trollies or rucksacks and stream along to ‘The Bowl’.  To get the perfect spot on the grass one needs to arrive at least two, but preferably three, hours before the start and lay out a picnic blanket to mark the spot making sure to reserve enough space for all the group and their picnics and accoutrements.  Then it is time for all the others to find the spot and so across the grass there are people with mobiles held to ears bobbing up like meercats frantically waving hands or umbrellas to direct their friends.  Then finally as the sun begins to fade the music begins and life is transformed.  Swifts swoop around catching insects, dragon flies flit in and out, seagulls give the occasional squawk and sit on the cables supporting the fabric of the bowl.  As the night comes in large fruit bats silently head off across the bowl for a night of foraging and gradually the city skyline lights up. It is a wonderful tradition that has been happening since 1959 when Sidney Myer set up a trust to fund free summer concerts for the people of Melbourne.  He also donated the wonderful Myer Music Bowl, set in a hollow of the gorgeous Kings Domain Gardens so perfectly situated and designed that the acoustics are just perfect.  As the last notes fade everyone packs up and heads off home – a large but friendly crowd, moving in a daze after exposure to such a lovely evening.

MSO at MMB

Night falls, MMB

MSO at Myer Music Bowl

Golden Kitsch

Myer Music Bowl

Picnicking at the Myer Music Bowl

We also joined the free City Library. Situated right by Flinders St Station with branches in Docklands, North, West and East Melbourne, it is ideal for those of us who don’t know exactly where we will be living.  We do not buy any books due to Alan’s space restrictions, so this is ideal, with e- books to download, DVDs to borrow and a handy place to sit and relax while up in town.

I was very motivated to be fit ready for tonight for we are heading into Melbourne for the fabulous  White Night  – twelve hours of light shows, projections, music and dancing.  This is the festival’s fifth year and has been on my wish list ever since my sister sent photos and her rave reviews of its last four.  I was thrilled when London held its first Lumiere Light Festival last January and managed to visit three nights out of four despite freezing temperatures and massive crowds.

Although saddened to hear that London will not be holding one in 2017 – a victim of its own success- I am so happy to be in Melbourne for this one. Pics to follow!

18th February 2017

Living with a Menagerie

I began writing this sitting on the veranda of  a straw-bale house in Wallington in the middle of the Bellarine Peninsula in Victoria, my home state.  We came for two weeks to do a house sit for friends.

Melbourne is set at the ‘top’ of Port Philip Bay with Geelong to the south west at the gateway to the Bellarine Peninsula.  Mornington Peninsula is to the east and Westernport Bay also visible.  Cowes is on Philip Isand where the famous fairy penguin colony lives.

This was our third trip here, having dropped in for a day visit from Melbourne soon after we arrived from London, then popped in for a few more days before Christmas when we parked Alan up under a tree and joined in with the family pre-Christmas preparations.

 

The self built straw-bale house

These included making Christmas trees and reindeer from twigs and creating a new garden bed for the sudden arrival of tomato plants from the friend with an excess. This time we have the house to ourselves and are surrounded by 5 acres of bush, a thriving vegetable garden and several sheds.  We were tasked with caring for Hazel the dog, Midnight the cat, numerous hens, a rooster and 12 very cute chicks that hatched on 30^th December.

The chicks make their daring escape

Success!

They seemed cute until they began escaping from their fox-proof enclosure. I had visions of magnificent wedge tailed eagles swooping down for a tasty morsel or coming out to bits of chicks strewn around the yard after an attack by foxes or by Midnight the cat.    Never having had much to do with chooks, I found searching under them for eggs while avoiding being pecked, and catching fast moving chicks, such an interesting experience that I made it my goal to keep all chooks and chicks alive.  Luckily, we did have some help with the task. Each night the rooster coralled the hens inside their pen so that all we had to do was shut the gate. They all looked very funny lined up on their perches, not daring to budge while the rooster stood guard.

Overall though, our tasks were not too onerous,  which gave us plenty of time to explore the region.  It has an interesting history as a favourite seaside holiday destination for Melbourne’s day trippers and weekenders who, from the mid-1800s, could catch a steamer from Port Melbourne to Queenscliff on the tip of the Bellarine, until cars became the favourite mode of transport and made them uneconomically viable.  The last steamer ran in the 1960s but recently a ferry has begun making trips across the heads between Sorrento to Queenscliff – a trip I would love to do but the thought gives Ian the horrors with his fears of seasickness ever present.  Melbourne sits at the northern end of Port Phillip Bay and wraps itself a long way around it culminating in two peninsula ‘arms’ at the southern point separated by 3.2 kilometres of treacherous sea known as ‘The Rip’ between their tips.  The Bellarine Peninsula is on the west; a two-hour drive from Melbourne reached by driving through the city of Geelong known as the gateway to the Bellarine. The Mornington Peninsula is the eastern ‘arm’ and it is an easy drive to reach some very beautiful countryside and more gorgeous beaches with a choice of ocean surf or shallow calm bay swimming.

The Barwon river flows down though Geelong and meanders down through the peninsula, reaching the sea between the twin settlements of Barwon Heads and Ocean Grove.  This is a beautiful area with lots of sandy beaches and calm swimming water in the estuary, restaurants with to-die-for views and wonderful cliff walks where you can walk to two lighthouses, around the marina to admire how the billionaires holiday on their luxurious yachts and watch the Spirit of Tasmania negotiating the heads on her way to and from Tasmania.  The stretch of sea between the heads is infamously known as ‘The Rip’ so we walked to Point Lonsdale to watch the ‘washing machine’ action of the surf.  No ships are allowed to pass through the heads without a pilot on board, with the exception of the Tasmanian ferries. During another walk along the sea front, we spent an entertaining half hour with our binoculars, watching container ships passing though the heads, followed by a pilot boat whizzing up to collect the pilot, a procedure that has become so efficient that s/he can be collected from the ship in 8 seconds.  We were very impressed.

The old shipwreck bell, Queenscliff.  The sign was the right way round but I gave up editing any more pics!

The Spirit heads off to Tassie

Under the pier, Point Lonsdale

19th century cottages, Queenscliff

Ian finds his brother in Queenscliff

Point Lonsdale rock formations

Point Lonsdale lighthouse

Cliff walk

Barwon Heads with the bridge across the Barwon river to Ocean Grove

We walked to the top of the lighthouse for a wonderful 360˚ view of the geography, and an interesting guided tour of the building.  We were all awarded a certificate congratulating us on managing the 121 steps to the top. After that I was rather disappointed not to have been given a certificate for ascending the 900 much steeper steps up the side of one of the Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains.

We visited the Port Arlington Mussel Festival where we sampled mussels with two different sauces, a fairly standard tomato based one and a delicious coconut, spicy Thai inspired one.  The mussels were so delicious that, when we had visitors staying  for the weekend, we cooked up another 5kg of freshly harvested ones.  They were the biggest mussels I have ever seen, and deliciously juicy.

Vintage Holden at the Port Arlington Mussel Festival

Sailing ship, Port Arlington

Ian with our friend Lynne at the mussel festival

The Bellarine is known for its wineries, and great eateries only a day trip from Melbourne.  We sampled many of its delicacies at farmers’ markets, farm shops and small friendly cafes.  We went fruit picking and filled a bucket with 1 ½ kg of the most delicious blueberries I have ever eaten.

Coffee in Queenscliff in the fairy garden

We had a few hiccups trying to get the air-conditioning in Alan the Camper fixed but eventually, after three trips back to the mechanic in Melbourne, and a bit of hassle making sure the dealer really was going to pay for it, we finally have wonderful, luxurious cool air issuing from the dashboard vents – only 5 months late but better than not at all.  It was optimal timing because our hosts had to curtail their trip early after one of the struts of their camper trailer collapsed.  We spent that day moving back into Alan and making everything spick and span for their arrival.  They are very special friends and so it was lovely to see the delight on their faces when they arrived back with four exhausted children to a lovely clean house, a thriving vege garden and healthy animals.

Late the next morning we headed back to Melbourne to stay with my wonderful friend Lynne in Eltham the leafy outer suburb of Melbourne.  However she insists it is not a suburb – it is in Melbourne’s GREEN WEDGE.  I stand corrected.

*Thanks to Ian Miller for permission to use several of these pics.

1 February 2017

An upside down Christmas and a hot New Year’s Eve

Sunset at Docklands, Melbourne.  NYE.  Photo by Dean

I have loved celebrating my first southern hemisphere Christmas and New Year for 38 years.  I celebrated my last one aged 24 when making plans to go OS (overseas) as we called ‘doing’ Europe.  I had finished my nursing training and had then spent nine months working in a small Melbourne suburban hospital.  I had also just managed to extricate myself from a fairly disastrous and volatile five-year relationship and I was looking forward to my new adventure.

That all seems so long ago.  I am such a different person – much older and much wiser – although it certainly would not take much to be wiser than that confused and unworldly 24-year-old trying to find her way in a rapidly changing world.  Melbourne is a very different place and I much prefer it now.

Soon after arriving in Melbourne on the 15^th December, I was struck down by The Lurgy that left me prostrate for four days barely capable of stringing more than two words together. However the evil mixture, called Fire Tonic,  recommended by my friend helped to get me back on my feet and so on the fifth day I staggered out blinking in the sunshine

Fire tonic – tastes disgusting but works a treat on The Lurgy.

like a demented wombat to meet my sister in  East Melbourne.  She had treated us to a “Welcome back to Melbourne” visit to the Johnston Collection and this was something I was not prepared to miss.

The website explains that “The Collection is the legacy of William Robert Johnston (1911-1986) an antique dealer and collector of beautiful things.  He loved objects that were unusual and visually arresting.” He left his houses and collection to the people of Victoria, directing that a trust be set up after his death and the collection rearranged three times each year. Each Christmas there is a theme and different groups of artisans are invited to decorate each room in the house creating new works to interpret the collection in a different way.  There is always a quirkiness and a wonderful sense of humour employed in the arrangements.  This Christmas was no exception. That is all I will write because I would hate to spoil the surprise. After a wonderful afternoon spent immersing ourselves in such fantasy and fabulousness, I finally felt Christmassy, although I was so tired form all the excitement that I had to go straight back to bed for the rest of the day.

We packed up Alan and drove him to North Fitzroy to spend 3 nights over Christmas with my sister and her partner.  We enjoyed the rush of cold air as we turned the newly fitted air-conditioning on, delighting in the luxury and comfort as we drove through a Melbourne beginning to get very hot.  After 12000km with no air con we were thoroughly excited about it.

I have always enjoyed going into town to see the Christmas decorations and shop windows. That alongside being with special people and eating and drinking together are my favourite aspects of Christmas.  When young, Mum and Dad would pack us all up into the car to drive the 12 miles into the centre of Melbourne to see the Myers windows.  As Dad drove, we children counted Christmas trees, with those on the left hand side of the car competing to spot more than those counting the right hand side ones.  With six siblings in the car it eventually became quite noisy until either Mum or Dad would yell “Calm down!”.  Myers still decorates their windows and I loved this year’s theme that was very Melbourne and quirky, featuring an inner city back yard and various Melbourne landmarks.

Acland Street St Kilda

Melbourne Christmas Decorations

Melbourne Christmas decorations

Christmas Eve was unpleasantly hot, made more so by a strong north wind. The only way to cope with this sort of hot wind is to shut all the windows, pull down the shades and keep the air con or fans blowing.  If you open doors and windows the house just heats up quicker as it fills with hot air.   Friends arrived for a lunchtime get together and we stuffed ourselves with a variety of starters, simply divine oysters, fish barbequed to perfection, salads and baked potatoes followed by my sister’s scrumptious calorie- and alcohol-laden mango desert washed down with a copious amount of bubbly, wine and beer.  That evening as we waited for the house to cool sufficiently to sleep in reasonable comfort, we strolled through the local park where I exclaimed over the brush tail possums sitting at the base of almost every tree, unbothered by us walking by.  Dotted throughout the park were groups of young people sitting on picnic rugs eating, drinking and chatting; just enjoying the cool evening and the relief from hot houses.  When I first arrived in London I was stunned to find the parks fenced off and gates locked at dusk. There are no fences around Melbourne parks and they are wonderful places to stroll or to sit on hot summer evenings.

We all emerged very slowly on Christmas morning as the temperature outside rose to 38˚ and the north wind started to blow again. A friend arrived to join us for a breakfast of freshly cut fruit, panetone and prosecco – a perfect start to the day that took us all morning.

Christmas breakfast North Fitzroy style

We contacted friends and rellies in the UK and compared notes on time, weather and food while cursing the Australian internet that caused our conversations to be interrupted at frequent intervals with “You’re breaking up”, “I can hear you, can you hear me?”, “Switch the video off, you’re pixillating” or “Hang up, I’ll call you back”.  While most people sat down to dinner in the middle of the day, we set off on a 60km drive to pop in on various relatives and to the house Ian and I are house-sitting to water the garden and feed and cuddle the indulged Burmese cat called Willow.

Her Ladyship, Willow

Our duties completed and while so close to the bay we just had to dip our toes in the water –  just because we could.

Melbourne CBD viewed from Brighton , Christmas Day

Arriving back to base at 6pm, it was time for Christmas dinner.  All four being cooks, we enjoy getting together to cook the meal while chatting, drinking wine and generally having such a lovely, relaxing time we are suddenly surprised by the lateness of the hour. We cooked butterfly prawns with a chilli dressing sitting on a bed of grilled greens.  Ian prepared salad and pudding was the leftover mango extravaganza from the day before.  We finished eating about 10pm and then went for another stroll.  With no one slaving over a hot stove, not a turkey or Christmas pudding within Coo-ee, our Australian Christmas fare was just perfect for this weather.

The next few days passed in a blur.  I recovered completely from The Lurgy but passed it on to Ian which has now wiped him out for several days.  I met up with a friend from my nursing training days.  We had been looking for each other for many years only to discover we were staying about 2km from each other in south east Melbourne.  She is a water baby too and we spent hours swimming together in the bay and catching up.  It is quite extraordinary to meet up after 25 years and slot comfortably into each other’s company as though our last meeting was only a week ago.  Ian and I also caught up with our whale watching buddies from Maryborough in Queensland.  They live just around the bay about 20 minutes’ drive away.  Of course, I managed another swim while there.

Ian was too ill to participate in the New Years’ Eve celebrations and so I abandoned him into the care of Willow the cat and joined Jackey and Jules at a party in an 11^th floor apartment overlooking Melbourne’s docklands.  As we munched our way through a sumptuous spread and consumed too much bubbly, we had a spectacular view of the gathering crowds and boats, a sunset that kept getting better and then the fireworks display that seemed to explode all around us.  With the colours and lights reflecting in the glass of the skyscrapers, it was even more spectacular.

Sun beginning to set over docklands, Melbourne NYE

Docklands Melbourne, NYE

It has been a wonderful end to 2016, our year of adventure and travel, and a fantastic start to 2017, only marred by Ian and I being apart on New Year’s Eve for the first time since we met in 2000. However, he will be better soon and ready to send out his next missive. For a Londoner, a hot Christmas and New Year is very odd.

We wish you all a wonderful 2017 and hope that it is a year of adventure, joy and hope.

1 January 2017

Never ask a farmer to look after a roast in haymaking Season…

We have arrived  back in my home state of Victoria after spending six days with my cousin Barbie and her husband Graeme on their 450- acre farm in Bungowannah, 10km west of Albury, just north of the Victorian border.

Albury and Wadonga are situated either side of the border and things can get rather tricky understanding what you can and can’t do either side.  Amongst other things, the education system, car registration and tax, state police and liquor laws are controlled by state legislation.  Before 1970 if you wanted to catch a train from Melbourne to Sydney or vice versa, you had to change trains at Albury because the train rails were different gauges. Eventually NSW won and standard gauge was installed from Melbourne to Sydney.  Albury’s train station is an impressively huge Victorian affair and it was where passengers would stop for a meal and/or a cuppa between changing trains. Now this building has been beautifully restored but is certainly not the bustling place it was back then.

The farm has been in Graeme’s family for several generations.  The farmhouse started life as a pub and is a wonderful rabbit warren of rooms with verandas on two sides and lots of doors.  For someone as geographically challenged as myself, it took a while to find my way around.

Bromley

We arrived at a busy time on the farm with Graeme busy out on his tractor mowing the paddocks and baling hay and lucerne. On our first day, Barbie took us for a drive around the high country in Victoria where I had holidayed as a child. Meanwhile, Graeme was busy on the tractor, but promised to get the pork roast started on the barbeque ready for dinner that evening. I struggled to recognise the country towns of Bright, Woodend, Yackadandah and Myrtleford I had last seen decades ago through the eyes of a child. I remembered lazy summer days swimming in the Ovens River, climbing up the banks to the water slide and whooshing down into the river.  By the end of the summer the soles of our feet were like leather after running barefoot over the smooth stones of the river bed. Nevertheless, we enjoyed a wander through the country towns, bought a selection of pies from the Yackadandah bakery to cook later, then shared a gourmet pub lunch in Bright with serves far too big.  We returned to the farm to find thick smoke billowing out of the gas fired barbeque that was situated a few metres from the farm house.

Barbie lifted the lid to reveal a very black roast pork surrounded by billowing flames fuelled by pork fat.  After a brief- very brief – discussion on the best way to tackle it, we ran for Alan the Camper’s fire blanket and threw it over the inferno.

Our very well cooked roast – saved by the fire blanket

Fifteen minutes later the fire was extinguished and we gingerly extracted the charred roast.  Being frugally inclined, we cut off all the charred bits, rinsed it under the tap, rewrapped it in foil and finished cooking it at a slower, much slower, rate.  Turns out that Graeme had put it on high and then got called away to deal with some farming problem and got distracted.  After a fit of the ‘What ifs’ and the ‘Oh shits’ we sat down to a yummy pulled pork minus crackle meal, all washed down with far too much bubbly and beer.

The next day dawned sunny and hot. Ian and I were making plans for a solo adventure in Barbie’s car with the luxury of air conditioning when a call came in from Graeme who had been out working since 5am.  A large gum tree had been hit by lightning and the paddock of lucerne he was trying to mow was strew with large lumps of exploded red gum that kept getting stuck in the mower blades. Off we all went in the ute and spent the morning picking up the wood, that had been blown up to 200 metres from the tree, while being divebombed by vast quantities of flying insects.  We both got to accompany Graeme on a couple of rounds of the paddock in his new tractor – very comfy and fully air conditioned.

After that excitement, it was time for a swim. it is always time for a swim.

We set off for the Hume Dam, a massive construction that holds water from the Murray River- the river that forms the border between Victoria and NSW.  Just as I had donned bathers and jumped into the water, thunder started rumbling in the distance and lightning stuck the hills around the dam.

Thunderclouds over the Hume Dam

Many people in Australia are killed each year by lightning and one of the most dangerous places to be is in open water, so I jumped out pretty swiftly.  We went for a drive around the dam instead but were stopped halfway round by a fallen tree across the road, the result of a lightning strike we had managed to avoid.  This was not a problem for the local farmer who hopped on his tractor and pushed it out of the way while we stood ready to warn any approaching vehicles. After all that excitement, we returned to the farm where the resident rooster took a disliking to me and went on the attack.  We both had a go on the quad bike that has controls similar to a motorbike but is nothing like one to ride.

I never knew being in the country could be so exciting and the time flew until it was it was time to leave for some much-needed rest and to detox after far too much bubbly – my cousin is a terrible influence.

We spent a couple of days by Waranga Dam, just south of Shepparton, the agricultural, orchard town my parents hail from, where we caught up with paperwork and Christmas cards.  There has been so much rain this winter that the waters are only just now receding.  Along the edge is fresh green grass and each evening a huge mob of kangaroos came to feed.

Gin and tonic o’clock

View of Waranga Basin from Alan the Camper

From Waranga we drove to Bendigo to meet my school friend Lynne and her friend Leo.  Bendigo is in the heart of goldmining country and the wealth that has come out of the ground here is obvious by the city’s vast number of extravagant public buildings and beautiful private houses. After weeks in shorts we were quite shocked by the icy winds and cold nights we experienced when we arrived in Bendigo.  We certainly did not expect to be digging out our wintery clothes in December. We spent an interesting afternoon down a goldmine with a guide whose family had lived in Bendigo for several generations and had wonderful stories to tell of those times.

Lynne, Ian and I ready for the descent

Lynne and Ian at the entrance to North Deborah goldmine, Bendigo

Poppet Head North Deborah Mine, Bendigo

Our wonderful and very entertaining guide

Bendigo shopping

Camping with Lynne and Leo, Bendigo

Santa arrives by tram in Bendigo!

We knew we we back in foodie Victoria when we found the incredibly well stocked health food store, several fabulous coffee shops, wonderful bread and the Saturday farmers’ market chock a block full of all our favourites.  Bendigo is only one of the country towns that sprang up during the gold rush.  There are many smaller towns that have beautiful buildings that refect the wealth generated back then.  A short drive from Bendigo is Eaglehawk where we spent a couple of hours wandering through the tiny museum and lockup.

Eaglehawk lock-up – still in use until the 1970s as an overnight stop for those who had overindulged in the local brew

The former Eaglehawk town hall – now a cinema

Our last stop before Melbourne was to Wallington on the Bellarine peninsula just south of Geelong, the city closest to Melbourne.  Here we set up Alan at Jodi and McGill’s 5-acre property.  They are Lynne’s daughter and son-in-law and have four wonderful free range children, and a variety of animals, sheds, gardens and wildlife.  Life is never quiet there.  Jodi and I had fun with the power tools making wooden Christmas trees and reindeer while Ian created a new tomato bed out of pre-loved chicken wire and bricks. Lynne came down for a couple of evenings and we went off to Geelong for a culture day visiting the new library and art gallery.

Jodi’s reindeer

Jodi makes her reindeer – she likes power tools as much as I do.

My job was to construct the Christmas tree from fallen branches

Then it was off back to Melbourne for Christmas.  As we drove in and passed the familiar landmarks appeared, it felt like coming home. I am truly a Melbourne girl but now so torn between my love to London and my love for Melbourne.

As I finish this blog, I am sitting in absolute luxury in Lizzie and Tim’s beautiful terrace house in East Brighton, around the bay from the Central Business District (CBD).  They have gone to the UK for Christmas and we are house sitting and keeping Willow, their very indulged Burmese cat, company.  The bathroom and loo are 10 metres from our bed which does not need to set up each evening and Ian has been enjoying cooking in a fully equipped kitchen without bumping his head once.  Alan the Camper has gone off to have the air-conditioning repaired.  After 5 months with none, to us, being in a vehicle with it is the height of luxury.  Lizzie and Tim asked us to drive their car to stop the battery going flat.  It was was not a hard task to agree to– no rattles, easy to park, power steering, aircon.

We went into the centre to meet my sister Jackey and partner Jules to visit the very English-like Kelvin Club for an evening of live music and then went for a wander to check out the Xmas lights and catch a glimpse of the famous Myers windows where the queues are thoroughly impressive. Luckily we are all tall. We watched the end of a wonderful light show that is projected each evening on the town hall façade.

Melbourne Town Hall  Christmas light show

We need to visit it again to see the whole thing. However, not for a few days as I have been struck down the dreaded lurgy that is keeping me housebound for the moment.  Although if I must be housebound this is certainly a lovely place to be…

So time to wish you all a very Happy Christmas and a wonderful 2017

 

 

 

Shock news from the USA – so off to the hairdresser…

 

When I woke this morning, I hoped it had all been a horrible nightmare but it is true.  America has voted in a sexist, racist, xenophobic buffoon, totally unsuited for the role of President of the USA. After the shock of Brexit, I could not be reassured that a similar protest vote would not happen in the US and am now feeling quite devastated by the news.

Hunter Valley grape vines

Hmm – where to go first?

What’s a girl to do in such a terrible situation?  We are staying in Singleton in the Hunter Valley, the area world famous for its excellent wines, and a foodies’ paradise.  We found a reasonably priced hairdressing salon and treated ourselves to haircuts.

My new shorter look

I opted for a much shorter style to suit the increasingly warmer weather as summer approaches. I then bought two new lipsticks after which we found a suitably hipsterish café – all mismatched ‘preloved’ furniture, ‘distressed’ wooden tables, condiments in old jam jars and golden syrup tins, and the bill handed to you in old Little Golden Books.  We had an excellent Ploughman’s lunch, chocolate mudcake, and coffee. We were feeling much better until we bought The Australian and read the depressing details.   We are off on a vineyard trail to sample olives, cheese and wine tomorrow but meanwhile we will just have to drown our sorrows tonight with Woolworth’s finest red and white.

Well, after getting that off my chest – back to news about our latest adventures. I last wrote from Brisbane where we stayed a few days with my cousins and luxuriated in a full-sized bed that did not have to be folded up each evening then taken down each morning and a bathroom just across the hall. They were wonderful hosts and I delighted in getting to know them a little more as we swapped family tales, attended one of the children’s school concerts and went for a walk up and down Mt Coot-tha, at the top of which we were rewarded with coffee and cake and wonderful views over Brisbane.

Brisbane from Mt Coot-tha

We spent the next few days south of Brisbane with our friend Phil who we had first met in Lismore, a few blogs back. He was still busy truck driving 14 hours a day but now his weekends were spent heading down to NSW to help his partner Dian pack up and move from the macadamia farm she had recently sold. – and where we had stayed when they rescued us from the cold and misery of Byron storms and Alstonville rain.  He left us to our own devices during the day then arrived back to a meal we had cooked. Staying in another house gave us the time and space to treat Alan the Campervan to a proper clean out, defrost his fridge, do all our washing and make new fly/mozzie screens for the doors.  Being too stingy to spend $600 or so on custom made ones I was determined to get something made before we headed off to the outback, notorious for its vast quantity of flies, mozzies, moths, beetles and midges.

We spent one day in Central Brisbane where we caught the City Cat ferry from the South Bank to the West End, one of the more trendy areas.  Our trusty Lonely Planet guided us to Burrow, described as ‘a Baja California cantina crossed with a student share house’ situated in ‘the open-sided under storey of an old Queenslander’. We didn’t need to indulge in the ‘hangover removing Bill Murray cheeseburger’ so we settled for a wonderfully thin-crusted pizza, triple cooked, crispy-skinned fat chips and craft beer. We then ventured out for a very mellow walk back to the train station.

Great beer, hipster atmosphere

 

Another view of the old Queenslander – the best place to escape the heat is to sit underneath

 

 

 

We left Brisbane on Saturday 29^th October and headed south to Glen Innes, intrigued by descriptions of New England and Celtic country.  Getting there entailed crossing the Queensland border back into New South Wales.  A few blogs back I wrote of my trepidation about visiting Queensland.  Now, reflecting on our time there, I am so glad we went.  It is a huge state and although we travelled over 2000 kilometres up the coast of it and then back down via an inland route, there is so much we did not get to see.  We met many wonderful, kind and generous people and realised my childhood dreams of snorkelling the indescribably beautiful Barrier Reef, walking in tropical rain forest, and seeing old Queenslander houses.  Although we were told the weather was pleasantly warm for Queenslanders, we still struggled with the heat and humidity of the far north. Yes, there are huge political, environmental, and economic challenges here but I still feel blessed to have had the opportunity to see and experience so much of this amazing state.

We drove into New England over a mountain range.  Ian is convinced that when Australia is not flat with very straight boring roads, it is all uphill.  We are always in the slow lane going up and are passed by all vehicles on the road apart from bicycles, garbage lorries, mobility scooters and road sweepers.  This does give me lots of opportunities to take photos out of the car windows of the changing countryside. Just to clarify –  Ian is driving.

New England is full of Scottish names, European trees, green grassy slopes on gently undulating pastures, sheep and cattle.  There are very pretty townships and even a yearly Celtic festival held nearby the recently erected Australian Standing Stones.

Australian Standing Stones, Glen Innes

It was not exactly Stonehenge but maybe a few centuries of weathering will improve the ambience there.  We set up camp at the showground where a vintage commercial vehicle fair was in full swing and so the next morning we wandered over for a good look and a chat to some of the enthusiasts before heading into town for the self-guided heritage walk and lunch in the municipal riverside gardens.

 

At Glen Innes showground

At Glen Innes showground

At Glen Innes showground

At Glen Innes showground

At Glen Innes showground

Glen Innes town centre

Glen Innes town hall – hedging all bets with flags from everywhere Celtic…

Retro garage (or Servo if you are Aussie) Glen Innes

In the local museum – the official Australian Olympic costume from the 1960s

Museum courtyard Glen Innes – formerly the town’s hospital

Ian in the appropriate land

These could have been anywhere in the southern counties of England.  With lush green turf, European trees, and abundance of roses, irises, and sweetpeas there was not a gum tree in sight.  When European settlers arrived in Australia, they missed ‘home’ so much that they strove to recreate the gardens and landscape they had grown up with.  In New England the climate is such that it was highly successful. We were lucky with the weather for our walk as that night we had very heavy rain and packed up the next morning squelching through soggy turf.  I really, really, hate packing up in the rain.  It all seems to take so much longer and then we have to dry everything out once we get where we are going.  Hmm, on second thoughts, I also don’t like packing up when it is windy or too hot.

From Glen Innes we drove out of green and pleasant lands to the drier and dustier Moree because I had heard there was a camping park there with five pools all heated from thermal springs.

On the road to Moree

Our lunch stop on the road to Moree

The ever patient Ian was willing to indulge me in my watery fetish and so we spent a pleasant two days popping in and out of pools that ranged in temperature from the 25 metre one at 25 degrees to the round soaky sit-around-and-chew-the-fat ones at 34, 35, 37, and 39 degrees.  The second day we were there, I managed my first swim and soak at 7am and my last at 10pm. Sheer bliss.

Next stop – Lightning Ridge

10^th November 2016

Beware the Giant Stinging Tree and falling Bunya nuts…

Continuing our southward journey, we are still inland and passing though some wonderful countryside.

Wildflowers on the roadside driving to Kingaroy

The unique Australian windmills found all over

Beef country!

Our views of vast stretches of canefields, and the lesser acres of banana palms and pineapple plantations have been replaced with cattle country, peanut farms and wheat fields.  We visited Kingaroy, the centre of Australia’s peanut industry where we spent a pleasant couple of hours in the tiny museum directly opposite huge peanut silos that dominate the centre of town.  We are now very well informed about peanut growing and harvesting. Among many other interesting facts, I was totally unaware that peanuts are part of the legume family and related to peas and beans. We then stopped at the famous peanut van where we purchased several little bags of peanuts in different flavours.  We were almost spoilt for choice by the quantity of different flavours.  We certainly ruined our appetites for dinner after sampling at least fifteen.

Alan feeling small next to Kingaroy’s giant peanut silos

Kingaroy’s famous Peanut Van

Spoilt for choice!

We had planned to stay in Kingaroy but that afternoon the forecast rain arrived and so we headed off towards the Bunya Mountains.  We had read about the unique Bunya pines that grow up to 45 metres and have huge cones weighing up to 8kgs.  Before whites came in the 1800s and began to log in the area this was a special meeting place for the indigenous people who travelled vast distances to join in the huge gatherings lasting 2-3 months fuelled by the highly nutritious Bunya nuts.

Ian beneath a bunya pine

A majesticly towering Bunya pine

Now the Bunya pines that are left in this area are contained within the Bunya Mountains National Park.  The drive up was very steep and windy but the views over the surrounding countryside were stunning.  We ate a picnic lunch while rosellas, rainbow parakeets and currawongs flew around and wallabies basked in the sunshine.  We then walked for 5km through rainforest admiring the Bunya and Hoop pines that towered above us, magnificent Strangler Figs and scary Giant Stinging Trees.  Strangler Figs start their lives high up in the canopy where birds who have eaten the figs pass the seed into the fork of a tree.  It then sends many roots down to the ground while growing up into the canopy, using the host tree for support.  Eventually the host tree slowly dies through lack of light and the strangler fig becomes a self-supporting plant with a hollow centre where the host tree has rotted away.  This example is over 400 years old – the biggest we have seen.

400 year old Strangler Fig

Strangler Fig- large enough to walk through

Stinging trees are rather nasty as they are coated in tiny hairs made of silica. Brushing against any part of the plant will cause exquisite pain that can be so severe it has been known to kill dogs and horses who have strayed too close.  There is no cure.  The hairs need to be removed with depilatory wax or sticky tape but if severely stung, the pain can stay for months.  We kept well away from them.

A friend told us we had to try Bunya nut cookies available in the café near the info centre.  Unfortunately, they had run out of them but we were offered a nut to taste.  They do not have much of a flavour but I am looking forward to trying them toasted and then sprinkled over a salad.

A model of a Bunya cone and a  real Bunya nuts – if it had been the right season we would have been wearing hard hats!

A friendly local drops in

We drove back down the mountain, pausing only for me to remove the tick that had attached itself to Ian’s stomach and was merrily gorging itself on his blood, we eventually located the little farm that Wikicamps informed us took paying guests.  There was no sign and it looked quite deserted until I called at the homestead door and was met by Nicky, an English-born artist building developing the property with her partner. She invited us in for a cup of tea before we set up Alan in a paddock about 50 metres from the house. Only one car has past us in over 6 hours.  The sky that night was a velvety black with the stars twinkling until the full moon rose and shone brightly over the whole area. Before night fell, we went for a walk through a paddock of horses, including a foal, another of shorthorn cattle, past chicken coops and guinea fowl (good for eating ticks we were pleased to learn).  The amenities, located in the under-house utility room that was still very much a work in progress consisted of a shower and laundry trough surrounded by shelves of paint pots and tools.  As we performed our ablutions we were watched by a beady eyed possum, disturbed from its slumbers up on the shelf.

Our farm stay at the foot of the Bunya mountains

Curious horses.  My tucked in trousers are to try and prevent ticks chomping me

Brushtailed possum and baby

We set off to the large rural town of Toowoomba the next day where we stayed for two nights before travelling onto Brisbane to see my aunt and cousins.  Toowoomba is set 700metres above see level and because we approached it from the west there was just a gentle incline rising from the very flat Darling Downs.

self-explanatory…

Overlooking Toowoomba’s Tabletop Mountain

However, leaving to the east entailed a dramatic descent down a long, steep gradient through the mountains, part of the Great Dividing Range. On our trip to Brisbane, we diverted of the freeway to drive alongside the Wivenhoe dam, a very impressive body of water that forms the main supply for Brisbane.

The Wivenhoe Dam looking very benign

This is where all the problems started that caused the huge flood in Brisbane a few years ago that hit the news all over the world.  After several years of drought, the dam was full and the authorities were loathe to release any water until they were sure it would be necessary.  The weather pattern swept in very quickly and the dam volume rose rapidly to the extent of threatening the integrity of the wall.  In a panic, the gate was opened and water rushed down and swamped the western suburbs of Brisbane.  This included my cousins’ property in Fig Tree Pocket, where the levels rose by almost 10 metres.  We listened entranced to their story of Surviving the Great Flood of Brisbane.  It was hard to imagine water levels so high as I sit in their beautiful garden overlooking a small dried up creek bed typing this.

24 September 2016